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2003 34: 427Security Dialogue Peter van Ham

War, Lies, and Videotape: Public Diplomacy and the USA's War on Terrorism

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War, Lies, and Videotape: Public

Diplomacy and the USA’s War onTerrorism

PETER VAN HAM*

Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’,The Hague

This article argues that the United States is not only fighting a waragainst international terrorism by classical, military means, but is alsoengaged in a battle over the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Muslim world.It examines the USA’s public diplomacy efforts to manage the after-shocks of 9/11, and identifies the key concepts that underlie publicdiplomacy. The article presents a brief overview of the main points of criticism that these policies have provoked. It concludes that althoughthe USA’s public diplomacy is an essential (and still underdevelopedand undervalued) component of its overall policy towards the MiddleEast, it will take more than better communications to address the

USA’s credibility and image problems in that region.

Call it public diplomacy, or public affairs, or psychological warfare, or – if you reallywant to be blunt – propaganda. But whatever it is called, defining what this war isreally about in the minds of the 1 billion Muslims in the world will be of decisive andhistorical importance.

(Richard Holbrooke, ‘Get the Message Out’, Washington Post, 28 October 2001)

THE UNITED STATES is not only fighting a war on international terror-ism by classical, military means, but is also engaged in efforts to winthe moral and political support of the Muslim world. The gritty video-

tapes of Osama bin Laden that emerged from a cave in Tora Bora wereshown to a global TV audience, indicating that the media were both theweapons and the battlefield of choice for this postmodern war. This is not

just a struggle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Muslim people, but will alsomark out the meaning and role of the USA (and ‘the West’ in general) fordecades to come. Clearly, 9/11 was not an attack on US military capabilities

but on the USA’s identity as a superpower. Many Americans were shockedto be confronted with such violent hatred of their country and everything it

© 2003 PRIO, www.prio.noSAGE Publications, www.sagepublications.com

Vol. 34(4): 427–444, ISSN 0967-0106 [040268]










stands for: its foreign policies as well as its values. ‘Why do people hate usso much?’ soon became a key question, not only for ordinary Americans, butalso for policymakers in Washington (Hoffman, 2002).

The US State Department’s response to the attack – on top of the bombingcampaign in Afghanistan and the subsequent war in Iraq – was to concludethat a major part of the problem was the USA’s image. Following 9/11, theBush administration therefore set in motion a flurry of initiatives aimed atrebranding the USA as a ‘compassionate hegemon’ rather than a ‘global

bully’. In an effort to touch ordinary citizens of Muslim countries (and espe-cially the often evoked ‘Arab street’), special attention is now being paid toso-called public diplomacy. The argument is that ‘millions of ordinary people. . . have greatly distorted, but carefully cultivated images of [the USA] –images so negative, so weird, so hostile that a young generation of terrorists is

being created’ (Beers, 2003). US policy towards the Muslim world is based onthe assumption that these negative ideas should be neutralized – and, in theend, changed – by a focused effort of public diplomacy. This approach hasquickly become a central plank of the USA’s approach to the war on terrorism,since Washington realizes that you cannot kill ideas with bombs, howeverprecision-guided they may be. This common-sense notion has become evenmore relevant for Washington’s policy towards the Middle East in the wakeof the US-led invasion of Iraq in April 2003. The USA now faces the complextasks of nation-building in Iraq, which, among other things, require that US

(and allied) troops be recognized as ‘liberators’, not ‘occupying forces’.The present article examines the USA’s public diplomacy efforts to managethe aftershocks of 9/11. It identifies the basic concepts that underlie publicdiplomacy and offers a number of concrete examples of how the war againstterrorism is ‘sold’, both within the USA and abroad. It then presents a brief overview of the main points of criticism that these efforts have provoked.The article also assesses the likelihood that the USA’s new public diplomacyinitiatives will succeed in altering the image of the USA (and ‘the West’ ingeneral) in the Muslim world. It concludes that although the USA’s publicdiplomacy is an essential (and still underdeveloped and undervalued) com-

ponent of its overall policy towards the Middle East, it will take more than better communications to address the USA’s credibility and image problemsin that region.

The Evolution of Public Diplomacy

The concept of public diplomacy has been defined in a variety of ways

(Manheim, 1994), and its role and place in international politics havechanged over time (Pratkanis, 2001; Ross, 2002). In terms of its goals, empha-

428 Security Dialogue vol. 34, no. 4, December 2003








sis might be given to communicating directly with foreign peoples (Malone,1988), changing a foreign government by influencing its citizens (Frederick,1993), or simply creating a favourable image for one’s own country’s poli-

cies, actions and political and economic system (Gilboa, 2000). One of theproponents of public diplomacy in the US Congress, Representative HenryHyde (R-IL), has argued that ‘the role that I would set for our public diplo-macy [is] to enlist the populations of the world into a common cause andto convince them that the goals that they seek for themselves – freedom,security and prosperity – are the same as those the United States seeks’(Hyde, 2002: 3). But one thing that is undoubtedly a key element of publicdiplomacy is the building of personal and institutional relationships and dia-logue with foreign audiences by focusing on values, which sets the activityapart from classical diplomacy, which primary deals with issues. The theory

and practice of public diplomacy are part of a wider discourse that alsoinvolves strategic communications and branding. Taken together, theseembody a new direction in the evolution of diplomacy that is taking place ina novel technological and political context (Riordan, 2002).

In the USA’s new quest for sympathy and support across the globe, media,public relations (PR) and marketing specialists no longer form a sideshowto traditional, government-to-government diplomacy. Brand thinking and

brand-asset management now dominate American life, affecting the natureand dynamics of US politics as well. Business gurus encourage their publics

to think of themselves as a ‘brand’, while territorial entities (countries,regions, cities) are equally branding themselves like companies and prod-ucts. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that US Secretary of State ColinPowell defined US diplomacy as follows: ‘We’re selling a product. Thatproduct we are selling is democracy.’1

A clear indication of the change in the US approach to diplomacy was theappointment of Charlotte Beers, former chairman of advertising agencies

J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather, to the position of Under Secretaryof State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in October 2001.2 Just as thePentagon has enlisted the help of Hollywood’s creative thinkers to brain-

storm possible terror events and solutions, Beers asked her former MadisonAvenue colleagues to help rebrand and ‘sell’ Uncle Sam to a hostile Muslimworld (Rutenberg, 2002; Teicholz, 2002). Since public diplomacy ofteninvolves intercultural communication, serious efforts are now being made toadapt the USA’s political message to reflect the cultural sensitivities of foreign (usually Muslim) publics. New marketing, PR and branding methodsare used to communicate with these target audiences. This requires skills thatdiplomats cannot be expected to master, at least not instantly and with the

Peter van Ham Public Diplomacy and the War on Terrorism 429

1 See Foreign Policy (2001).2 Beers left this position in March 2003, officially for health reasons; see the statement by US Secretary of State

Colin Powell, available at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/18129.htm (12 March 2003).








requisite expertise. It is therefore little wonder that much of the USA’s publicdiplomacy activities are currently ‘outsourced’ to private communicationsagencies.

Of course, old-fashioned propaganda and information-management are farfrom being new phenomena (Taylor, 1995). The USA has confronted similarchallenges for communicating its message to foreign audiences over the lastcentury and has each time invented new means and mechanisms for doingso. For example, a Committee on Public Information was set up duringWorld War I, followed by the Office of War Information and the AdvertisingCouncil (whose aim was to ‘out-Goebbels Goebbels’) to win over ‘hearts andminds’ (both at home and abroad) during World War II. During the ColdWar, the United States Information Agency (USIA) was engaged in a widerange of activities, from managing information-exchange programmes to

cultural events (Bardos, 2001). In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan estab-lished the Office of Public Diplomacy mainly to ‘manage’ the media and toencourage support for the USA’s covert wars in Central America. Morerecently, the Clinton administration set up a special office to address theSerbian people, encouraging them to overthrow their dictator SlobodanMilosevic (Snow, 2002).

Washington’s intensified public diplomacy efforts after 9/11 thereforefollow a well-established tradition of using the USA’s ‘soft power’ resourcesas political tools. However, after having ‘won’ the Cold War, the USA for a

decade neglected public diplomacy in the belief that its own societal modelwas no longer seriously challenged by an ideological ‘antithesis’ (Laqueur,1994; Neier, 2001). The implication of this was that international broadcast-ing (e.g. through Voice of America) and international-exchange programmes(e.g. through USIA) were scaled down in the expectation that, once liberated,the ‘captive nations’ of Central and Eastern Europe would spontaneously optfor the ‘American model’ of liberal democracy and an open economy. Theevents of 9/11 have been a rude reminder that this societal model remainsvulnerable and that continued efforts are required to neutralize critics andsway sceptics. Public diplomacy is now seen as the key to making up for this

decade of complacency by reinvigorating the USA’s unique and under-utilized cultural powers.

It should now be clear that US public diplomacy is a complex phenomenonaimed at conveying the USA’s commitments, goals and intentions to theworld through a wide variety of means and channels. It is a manifestation of the systemic transformation of international relations into a global politicalprocess, reflecting the reality that today’s diplomacy goes far beyond accred-ited ambassadors and encompasses ‘a wide range of actors from the privatesector, civil society, the media, labour movements, and religious communi-

ties who influence decisions of global significance’ (Khanna, 2003: 102).









Public Diplomacy and the Muslim World

Today’s public diplomacy differs from the practices employed during theCold War and before. Over the last few decades, the industrialized world haswitnessed a transformation of the political landscape, where telecommuni-cations liberalization, the explosive growth of the Internet and mergers

between computer, media and telecommunications companies have led tothe creation of the so-called Information Society. This has also affected theArab world, although not to the same extent as the West (Burkhart & Older,2003). But, despite the rise of satellite TV and access to the Internet, much of Arab society remains closed to the USA’s voice. What is more, dependingupon mass media to communicate with the Arab world remains problematic,

since ‘in the Arab world, more people get their news from their neighboursor people whom they know. . . . If America relies primarily on mass mediato get its message out, it may find its message further distorted on a massmedia scale’ (Zaharna, 2001: 4).

The USA’s public diplomacy aspires, at least for now, to enter into a dia-logue with the Muslim world, a dialogue that hardly exists at the moment.US public diplomacy should therefore be differentiated from informationwarfare, since it is less focused on the domination of communication flows,than on creating a Habermasian practice of democratic discourse aimed at

finding shared assumptions and values. This sets it apart from the old-stylepublic diplomacy of past decades, where dialogue was practically impossi- ble and communications had a one-way character. It has, however, provendifficult to develop a balanced public-diplomacy approach towards theMiddle East in the face of the stark realities of war and political violence inAfghanistan and Iraq (Leonard & Smewing, 2003). As I will argue below, thetemptation has been huge for the Bush administration to use public diplo-macy as a ‘soft power’ weapon on the information battlefield, rather than toengage in democratic, non-coercive communications with the Muslim world.

The ‘End of History’ Thesis

Within this broader historical and theoretical context, there are three basicconcepts that underpin current US public diplomacy. First, it rejects theHuntingtonian vision of a pending ‘clash of civilizations’, and instead clingsto Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ thesis.3 For example, the 2002 US NationalSecurity Strategy argues that it should be clear that there is only one ‘singlesustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enter-prise’ (White House, 2002). We may safely assume that the White House here


3 Francis Fukuyama (2001) argued a few weeks after 9/11 that ‘we remain at the end of history because thereis only one system that will continue to dominate world politics – that of the liberal democratic West’.








has the US model in mind. This implies that Islam is not seen as a credible, letalone viable, political programme offering an alternative to Western modern-ity. This assumption has major implications for US public diplomacy, since

Islamic culture and Muslim society are considered compatible with Westernvalues and institutions. President Bush has therefore continuously arguedthat the USA is fighting a war against ‘evil’, not against Islam.

US public diplomacy seems to take for granted that Muslim culture acceptsthe constituent elements of modernity, and that all Muslims have an innate,albeit repressed, desire to support both liberal democracy and capitalism.This implies that, despite the obvious political differences between the USAand (at least some) Muslim countries, US and Muslim culture do not ‘clash’,

but are in agreement. It further assumes that although ordinary Muslimsmay be opposed to US policies in the Middle East, they continue to be drawn

to ‘American values’ like individual choice and freedom. This distinction between hostile, extremist Islamic governments and political groupings, andthe ‘silent majority’ of a wider and larger Muslim community around theworld is a central tenet of the USA’s public diplomacy. It is also a highlydubious one, since it reduces a complex set of political concerns and oftenconflicting interests and values to mere problems of poor communicationand clever branding. It also allows for the doubtful claim that ‘the peoples of the world, especially those ruled by unelected regimes, comprise our trueallies. We are allies because we share common aspirations – freedom, secu-

rity, prosperity – and because we often face common enemies, namely theregimes that rule over them’ (Hyde, 2002: 2).Although US public diplomacy avoids a confrontational attitude towards

Muslim culture, its roots in the ‘End of History’ thesis often gives it a naivetouch that borders on haughtiness. This is not only reflected in US publicdiplomacy, but also in the plans of the Bush administration to democratizethe wider Middle East. These are based on the optimistic assumption thatonce the Iraqi people are freed from the yoke of the Saddam Hussein, USmilitary forces will be greeted as liberators, after which stability will dawnupon the region. It remains doubtful (or at least unproven) that it will take

mere ‘regime change’ in Baghdad to achieve a stable and democratic – letalone Western-oriented – Iraq. In this new context, current US difficulties instabilizing postwar Iraq seem to corroborate these doubts and concerns. Inthe meantime, US public diplomacy has become part of a semantic arena thatdefines the objectives of war, the roots of terrorism and a privileged policyoption to win the battle (Pollack, 2002).

Non-State Actors

A second concept underlying public diplomacy is the inclusion of a widevariety of non-state actors in the attempt to reach out to foreign audiences to









achieve strategic objectives. As one proponent argued, ‘we must draw uponthe talents in the private sector who have acquired practical experience in thecreation and promotion of compelling images and ideas here and around

the world’ (Hyde, 2002: 1). Instruments of public diplomacy include media,education and exchanges, and culture and sports, as well as more classicaldiplomatic avenues. A report of the US Advisory Commission on PublicDiplomacy acknowledges that ‘brands, products, popular entertainment,higher education, corporations, and Web sites all may reinforce or under-mine U.S. foreign policy objectives’ (US Advisory Commission on PublicDiplomacy, 2002).

Public diplomacy’s task is to appeal to the ‘core values’ of foreign audi-ences (see below) by using new techniques that are frequently directlyderived from commercial practice. Since these efforts go beyond spreading

information, a natural relationship is evolving with professionals in the‘place marketing’ and ‘location branding’ sectors (Kotler, 1997). In order to

be successful, public diplomacy – like commercial marketing and PR – needsto identify target audiences in each country and/or region, and to tailorstrategies and tools to reach those audiences in a variety of different ways.Linguistic barriers and cultural nuances obviously hinder the effectiveness of generic, ‘one size fits all’ public-diplomacy efforts, and specialized know-ledge is required to develop a better, more detailed understanding of audiences in the Muslim world. In general, two-way communication and

interaction with target audiences are preferred, although this still remainsthe exception rather than the rule. The aim is to breach the culturally andpolitically determined sphere of mediated images of the ‘world out there’within Muslim societies. Public diplomacy seeks to challenge the world-views of foreign audiences and to bridge the gap between areas of culturalapartheid.

This does not mean that selling the USA is treated in the same way as sell-ing a regular, commercial product. Instead, it implies that ‘Brand USA’ ismanaged, rather than re branded. Brand management involves the process of cautious, often measured supervision of existing perceptions. In this sense,

the USA is considered a ‘corporate brand’, since the USA (or ‘America’) isnot itself the primary brand, but the manager of a series of related sub-brands(its art, sports, media and technology, as well as its foreign policy).

Given the emotional power of images and stories, the US media industry isconsidered an especially valuable ally in this new approach. Commercial TVprogrammes, Hollywood movies and other cultural ‘products’ (from poetryand other forms of art to cuisine and folklore) are all supposed to communi-cate a better and more durable understanding of the country’s essence. Sincemainstream US TV programmes and movies are usually patriotic in content

and message, they are expected to reinvigorate ‘Brand USA’ through theircontinued glorification of individual freedom and endless opportunity









(Blumenfeld, 2002). It is generally assumed that audiences in the MiddleEast, Asia and elsewhere take much of their ideas of what the USA isall about from US movies and TV series. The impact of these images and

messages may well be greater than any description of the USA and its valuesoffered through governmental channels.

Public Diplomacy’s Two-Pronged Character

A third concept upon which public diplomacy is based is its inherent two-pronged character: it seeks to undermine the morale of the ‘enemy’ whileraising the spirits of the ‘allies’. The events of 9/11 not only triggered renewedefforts to market ‘Brand USA’ and US policies, but also generated a process of reflection on what ‘America’ actually stands for (or, perhaps better, should

stand for). The margins for rebranding, however, have been limited. Therhetoric of war and the return to ‘American values’ have proven to be a potentmixture intoxicating large parts of US society with a thinly veiled form of self-worship. Directly after 9/11, Charlotte Beers’s office requested the AdCouncil – which specializes in so-called public service announcements (PSAs)– to develop messages capturing the essence and value of US freedom anddemocracy. One such commercial (‘I am an American’) showed US citizens of different races and religions expressing their patriotism. Another showed atypical US suburban street with the caption ‘9/11 has changed the USA for

ever’, after which the picture faded and the same street was shown with USflags flying from every house. It is important to stress that these ads wereaimed at the USA’s own population, but are also part of a broader exercise toreposition and recharge the ‘American’ brand, both at home and abroad.These efforts to affect Americans’ self-perception also impact upon the wayoutsiders – in this case the Muslim world – see US policy objectives and weighup the USA’s determination to pursue them.

Conceptually, public diplomacy can be compared with location branding(van Ham, 2002). By managing their location’s brand equity, policymakersdo two things: externally, they aim to attract more clients and generate over-

all economic/political advantage for their location; internally, they aim toreinvigorate a sense of community among citizens and offer them a clearerself-concept (Olins, 1999; Anholt, 2002, 2003). The challenge of branding is toattract and satisfy these two, often radically different, audiences through onecoherent set of images and messages. By turning the war on terrorism into aManichean conflict of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ (‘you’re either with us or againstus’), the Bush administration has made it hard to bridge the gap betweendomestic and foreign publics.

Instead, Washington has used the wave of post-9/11 patriotism to push

through its international agenda, starting with the wars in Afghanistan andIraq and continued pressures for ‘regime change’ in the wider Middle East.









It has thereby used ‘9/11’ – which has become a brand in its own right – todominate political discourse and to discipline potential critics, not only with-in the USA, but also abroad. Current public diplomacy efforts are therefore

not only used to open up currently blocked communications channels between the USA and the Muslim populace in the wider Middle East. On thecontrary: for the Bush administration, the temptation has been overwhelm-ing to use public diplomacy as a ‘soft power’ tool for controlling and domi-nating political discourse, both at home and abroad.

Public Diplomacy in Action

How does US public diplomacy work in practice? US public diplomacyaspires to develop a strategy that will reposition ‘Brand USA’, making opti-mal use of the available brand assets. Several advisory committees, taskforces and hearings have spurred the debate about public diplomacy and itsuses.4 One of the key recommendations has been to immediately develop acoherent strategic and coordinating framework, making public diplomacy agenuine priority. This has proven to be difficult enough, given the multitudeof agencies, offices and working groups that feel that they are responsible forcommunicating the US message with foreign audiences. Shortly after 9/11,the Office of Strategic Information (OSI) was created to ‘sell’ US policies in

the Middle East, Asia and Western Europe, and to generate as much supportas possible for the US-led war on terror. However, the Office came underscrutiny in February 2002, because it was suggested that the Pentagon usedit to mislead the public and the media on the war on terrorism. Within aweek, the Pentagon closed the Office down, mainly because its reputation(and hence credibility) was seriously damaged.

In July 2002, a start was made to reinvigorate the USA’s public diplomacy.After years of cutbacks, the US Congress passed a bill allocating significantlymore funds to public diplomacy efforts and authorized funding for several

new programmes, such as a 24-hour TV network designed to compete withthe al-Jazeera TV station that is mainly broadcasting to the Muslim world(see below). At the same time, the White House set up a new Office of GlobalCommunications (OGC), taking over the initiative from Charlotte Beers andgiving the public diplomacy effort both more exposure and more politicalweight. As its name indicates, this Office intends to coordinate the adminis-tration’s foreign policy messages and supervise ‘Brand USA’ around theglobe. A few months later, it was announced that the OGC would oversee a


4 An Independent Task Force on Public Diplomacy was set up by the Council on Foreign Relations; the USAdvisory Commission on Public Diplomacy is a longstanding bipartisan panel created by Congress andappointed by the President; hearings have been conducted by the Committee on International Relationsin the House of Representatives in November 2001.








$200 million PR blitz against Iraq, using advanced marketing techniques topersuade crucial target groups that Saddam Hussein should be ousted. TheOGC has focused on winning the daily sound-bite battle and dominating

every news cycle. It has worked closely together with the Coalition Informa-tion Center (CIC), with offices in Washington, London and Islamabad. Theseform the so-called instant response – forces that are ready 24 hours a day to‘neutralize’ negative information and news. On top of that, the Iraq PublicDiplomacy Group – an interagency taskforce – has targeted newspapereditors, foreign policy think-tanks and the media in Europe and the MiddleEast to convince them of the war’s necessity. The Iraq Public DiplomacyGroup includes representatives from the CIA, the National Security Council,the Pentagon, the State Department and the US Agency for InternationalDevelopment. It was already formed under former president Bill Clinton to

counter Saddam Hussein’s public relations campaign against the UN sanc-tions regime. One of the Group’s first products was a brochure on the allegedthreat posed by Saddam Hussein both within Iraq and in the wider MiddleEast region (Lake, 2002).

Official US public diplomacy often remains on the cautious, at times eventimid, side. A recent example is an anthology of prominent US writers (puttogether by the US State Department and translated into Arabic, French,Spanish and Russian) that tries to convey what it means to be an ‘Americanwriter’ at the beginning of the new millennium. By focusing on ‘American

values’ such as freedom, diversity and democracy, this collection of storiestries to ‘humanize’ the USA’s negative image around the world (Wise, 2002).5

But, since public diplomacy goes way beyond printed books and aims toapply the most up-to-date communication techniques and methods, special-ized agencies and consultancies have been signed up to generate new ideasand projects that the US government hesitates to undertake itself. In October2001, the Rendon Group (or TRG, a strategic communications firm) obtaineda multi-million dollar contract from the Pentagon and now manages theUSA’s image across the world using a wide range of tools, such as focusgroups, websites and managing information in the global media.6

Market-oriented research efforts are now undertaken to get a better appre-ciation of how ‘Brand USA’ should be positioned effectively. Since culturalsensitivity is especially required in the packaging of political messages, whatone says may be less important than how others hear and understand it. In theworld of marketing and PR, this has been pointed out ad nauseam, but thepoint remains largely unheeded in the rushed daily practice of diplomacyand politics. This implies that US public diplomacy, in order to be effective,


5 Although less dramatic and political, this effort bears resemblance to the book The God That Failed (Cross-man, 1951), which was published during the height of the Cold War. In that edited work, a number of writers and other cultural notables explained how and why their belief in communism was shattered.

6 The firm’s CEO, John Rendon, describes himself as ‘an information warrior and a perception manager’(Foer, 2002).








should be more sensitive to cultural differences and identify the norms andvalues that are shared by the Western and Muslim worlds (Zaharna, 2003).One central task of firms like TRG is to assess how US (foreign) policies are

received by target audiences, since intercultural communication calls foradapting one’s message to the specific cultural sensibilities and needs of foreign audiences.

This requires careful research and analysis. Some research outcomes indi-cate that many of the core values of US society are fundamentally opposed

by significant parts of the Muslim world, and that although cultures do sharemany of the same values, they also obviously set different priorities amongthem. Zogby International – an opinion research group that regularly sur-veys Middle Eastern attitudes – suggests that the top five Muslim values arefaith, family, justice, ambition and knowledge. In the USA, the priorities are

freedom, family, honesty, self-esteem and justice. US public diplomacyefforts therefore focus increasingly on shared cultural priorities, namelyfamily and children (Pappas, 2001).

These cultural differences also affect the method and style of communica-tion. It has, for example, been argued that ‘in the Arab world, emotionalneutrality, in an emotionally charged context, can be perceived as deception.If one hides one’s emotions, what else is being hidden?’ (Zaharna, 2001: 3).This implies that the typically American direct and rational approach oftendoes not work and may even be counterproductive. Branding techniques are

useful here, since they assume that an emotional relationship based on trustmust be built gradually, rather than through one-off, outspoken messagesthat may well be viewed as offensive and culturally alien.

Private communications firms are now used to cover the whole gamut of technology and media to reach the Muslim world to achieve these objectives.Such firms are now engaged in classical propaganda, ranging from ‘leaflet

bombs’ picturing women beaten by the Taliban (with the message ‘Is this thefuture you want for your children and your women?’) to actions like drop-ping wind-up radios that can only tune into a single channel – Voice of America (Leonard, 2002a; 2002b). Newer initiatives include setting up Radio

Sawa (‘Radio Together’) and airing TV programmes like ‘Good MorningEgypt’ and ‘Next Chapter’. Radio Sawa is an Arabic-language broadcastingservice aimed at younger people, mixing Western pop music, sports andweather, sandwiched by twice-hourly newscasts. Shows like ‘Good MorningEgypt’ screen interviews with ‘ordinary Americans’ to counterbalance someof the stereotypes US TV programmes and movies tend to offer. ‘NextChapter’ is a hip, MTV-inspired show broadcast in Farsi to Iran (and simul-cast on the radio and over the Internet) (Clemetson & Fathi, 2002: 7). Theseare shows that portray the USA as an open, tolerant society, where all reli-

gions are practised on the basis of equality. Arabic-language websites andprint publications are also part of this effort (Dumenco, 2001).









Private firms are also involved in activities so far removed from accepteddiplomatic practice (due to their controversial nature or the risks involved)that official government agencies are all too happy to outsource them. TRG,

for example, has produced a wide range of propaganda programmes airedin Iraq. One of them involves spoof Saddam Hussein speeches and othersatirical newscasts aimed at undermining support for the Iraqi regime(Urbina, 2002). In August 2002, the State Department asked another consult-ancy agency to begin mobilizing Iraqis in North America, Europe and theArab world, preparing them to perform on talk shows, write newspaperopinion pieces and give lectures on the necessity of regime change in Iraq.Although these activities may well be crucial to achieving US foreign policygoals, their sensitive nature makes them anathema to diplomats and othergovernmental officials.

Only the imagination places limits on the kinds of programmes that may bedeveloped behind the screens. But, if the past offers any guide, we shouldassume that these will range from spin-doctoring and information warfare tooutright devious lies (Cohen, 2002).

Critical Voices

Like all branding efforts, recent public diplomacy initiatives have met withcriticism (Morey & Carpenter, 2002; Khanna, 2003). For example, JoshuaMuravchik (from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank) argues that opinion polls illustrate that the majority of Muslims do notsubscribe to ‘American values’ and that they routinely blame the USA formany of their ills (Rubin & Rubin, 2002; Muravchik, 2002, 2003). He criticizesthe current approach of public diplomacy, since it fails to recognize thesefundamental differences between Americans and Muslims (and Arabs inparticular). Muravchik disapproves of the duplicity of US public diplomacy,which clings to the Fukuyama thesis and fails to acknowledge basic cultural

differences and conflicts. He therefore concludes that the ‘problem is not our“brand”; it is their buying habits’ (Muravchik, 2002:29, emphasis added).

Criticism has also been aired from the other side of the political spectrum.It is argued that the problem with ‘Brand USA’ is not (only, or mainly) itstattered international image, but the very ‘product’ itself. Naomi Kleinclaims that the failure of US foreign policy to live up to its own promisesarouses the anger and frustration of millions of people (and Muslims in par-ticular) (Klein, 2002). The USA’s double standards and the gap between itspromise and image (‘Brand USA’) and its policies eventually undermine its

credibility (Andoni, 2002). This has been especially galling during the US-ledmilitary attack on Iraq. As Simon Anholt, a British branding specialist, has









argued, ‘You can’t smash them with your left hand and caress them withyour right. If you’re going to war you should suspend diplomacy because if you’re attacking a nation that’s all there is to it’ (Lewis, 2003: 28). These prob-

lems are likely to deepen if US difficulties in establishing and ultimatelyreforming Iraq persist.Moreover, the very process of branding is utterly suspect to Klein, who

claims that ‘at its core, branding is about rigorously controlled one-waymessages, sent out in their glossiest form, then sealed off from those whowould turn corporate monologue into social dialogue’(Klein, 2002). Themain criticism (after the ‘product’ bit), therefore, is that commercial brand-ing techniques seek consistency and clarity where there is (and should be)diversity and ambiguity. Bringing this commercial pattern to bear on publicdiplomacy implies that the people living in a country in which national

branding is taking place should conform to the privileged script of theirpolitical brand-leaders. In democratic systems, such a close coordination of acountry’s message may well result in an (albeit perhaps benign) authori-tarian system. From a theoretical angle, connections can be made to theviews of Norbert Elias and Michel Foucault, who both saw the rise of the‘disciplinary society’ as related to the formation of the state (Elias, 1982;Burchell, Gordon & Miller, 1991). Especially Foucault’s notion that the stateexercises a kind of disciplinary power through the internalization of con-straint in citizens may be useful here. Foucault argues that the social order is

not primarily secured through violence and coercion, but through disciplinetargeted at each individual, whereby they are morally pushed into conform-ity. The internal branding facet of public diplomacy may well contribute tosuch a disciplined society, undermining society’s democratic character.

Examples abound of this process. The US government (in close cooperationwith the PR firms it employs) has put pressure on national and foreign mediato spin the news and stick to privileged White House scripts. Western mediaare, in general, independent enough to overcome official pressure to followany party line. However, an atmosphere of being under siege and engaged inwar (against Al-Qaeda, Iraq and still unknown other terrorists and rogue

states) encourages both self-censorship and official censorship (Snow, 2003).A few weeks after 9/11, CNN’s standards and practices department sent outa memo that read: ‘We must remain careful not to focus excessively on thecasualties and hardships in Afghanistan that will inevitably be a part of thiswar, or to forget that it is the Taliban leadership that is responsible for thesituation Afghanistan is now in.’ The memo went on to suggest that reportersmight also want to tell viewers that the war is in response to a terrorist attack‘that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the U.S.’ (Bleifuss, 2001). Anotherexample has been that both President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony

Blair have called upon their national media to censor any tapes by Osama binLaden. Downing Street press officers even coined the nickname ‘Spin Laden’









to illustrate the point that these videotapes could not just contain ‘secretmessages’ to sleeping terrorist cells across the globe, but are part of Al-Qaeda’s propaganda efforts (Kirtley, 2001; Murphy, 2001).

Information Politics and Homeland Security

US public diplomacy towards the Middle East now aims to seize the com-munication initiative, compensating for the USA’s loss of control over bothits image and its message. This makes it part of a broader spectrum of communications strategies in which ‘information warfare’ also finds itsplace. The military part of information warfare involves the destruction of the communications and information systems of the enemy (TV, radio,radar). The remainder, however, involves tactics such as the management of

public information, efforts to control media sources and the outrightmanipulation of public opinion. Strategic deception and so-called influenceoperations are an integral element of any information-warfare scenario forUS armed forces (Arkin, 2002). In this context, public diplomacy is part of anemerging Noopolitik (noos being Greek for ‘the mind’), which competes withclassical, power-oriented Realpolitik since it is ‘an approach to statecraft, to beundertaken as much by non-state as by state actors, that emphasizes the roleof international soft power in expressing ideas, values, norms, and ethicsthrough all manner of media’ (Ronfeldt & Arquilla, 1999: 6).

Especially in the war on terrorism, these concepts are relevant to any pub-lic diplomacy effort, since information is seen as an asset, a tool and even aweapon for achieving political support for official US foreign policy, both athome and abroad. The problem, however, is that considering information asan asset runs the risk of blurring the boundaries between news and facts,on the one hand, and PR, propaganda and even psychological warfare(‘psyops’, in military-speak) on the other. This is why it has proven difficultto combine US public diplomacy efforts with the introspective mood basedon the idea(l) of so-called homeland security, which aims to coordinatenational strategy and to strengthen protection against terrorist attacks. More

often than not, in times of crisis people tend to seek safety among themselvesin voluntary ghettos, fearing ‘the other’ and externalizing the threat (Hedges,2002). This has reinforced the Realist paradigm that ‘security’ can bepromised in the ‘homeland’, but that beyond state borders anarchy lurks.Homeland security confirms the territorial definition of sovereignty. It over-looks the point, however, that territory is no longer the basis for power andhardly a sufficient guarantee for security. Conceptually, homeland securityand public diplomacy are difficult to combine.

The homeland security approach is based on the classical modern assump-

tion of the management and control of information and communication in ahierarchical and pyramidal way. This often results in the illusion of a sort of









omniscient and even omnipotent state. This stands in contrast to the philo-sophy of public diplomacy, which assumes flexibility through networks.Whereas homeland security is based on the notion of ‘power’, public diplo-

macy aims at ‘influence’. Whereas the former defines itself by the number of people, organizations, etc. it ‘controls’, the latter defines itself by the audi-ence it ‘reaches’, ‘touches’ and is ‘in contact with’. This is also reflected in thepolicy tools of both approaches. Whereas public diplomacy combines theinput of state actors with those of private firms and ordinary citizensinvolved in do-it-yourself diplomatic efforts, homeland security is a classicalsecuritized project only open to citizens in their role as informers in an ongo-ing ‘neighbourhood watch’. The risk, however, is that the paranoia of home-land security will crowd out the new openness of public diplomacy; thepolitical challenge is to prevent this from happening. It is within these two

conflicting paradigms (Realpolitik and Noopolitik ) that US public diplomacypost-9/11 has to find its proper place.

Conclusion

Public diplomacy has become an essential ‘soft power’ tool in the US war onterrorism. The US-led war on Iraq has made it imperative to garner publicsupport for the US and its policies, but it has also proven more difficult to do

so. The decision to use the USA’s image and communications assets andskills may be considered a response in kind to the asymmetrical warfare thatcommenced on 9/11. Like the terrorists who hit Western societies at theirweakest points using surprise and an imaginative choice of ‘weapons’, theUSA has decided to weaken popular support for terrorist activities throughequally innovative means. By communicating directly with Muslim popula-tions, the USA aims to put pressure on governments that – directly orindirectly – support terrorist groups. It thereby aspires to connect with audi-ences other policies cannot reach.

It remains easy to find the limitations and flaws of many public diplomacy

efforts. One of the more significant practical problems remains how toharmonize foreign policy and diplomacy with a coherent national brandingstrategy. Public diplomacy is also based on a ‘to know us is to love us’ atti-tude that barely hides the prevalent arrogance of many Americans abouttheir allegedly superior ‘way of life’. Moreover, as Isaiah Berlin once argued,‘to be the object of contempt or patronizing tolerance on the part of proudneighbours is one of the most traumatic experiences that individuals orsocieties can suffer’. They will respond, Berlin suggests, ‘like the bent twigof poet Schiller’s theory lashing back and refusing to accept their alleged

inferiority’ (Berlin, 1972: 17–18). In the post-9/11 security environment, thistwig may take the form of new terrorist activities.









Despite these risks and drawbacks, US public diplomacy adds a moresophisticated approach to the military method of ‘winning’ the war onterrorism. By going beyond Realpolitik (and into the uncharted waters of

Noopolitik ), it is becoming an essential strategy for influencing public opinionand political developments. Unlike a ‘real’ war, it never ends; instead, it is anongoing process of communication based on the conscious positioning of theUSA as a brand. Another (and arguably more important and difficult) goalof public diplomacy is restoring the USA’s credibility, which remains the

basis of effective communication and, ultimately, persuasion. Now that UStroops have entered Iraq, US military forces have become the ‘medium andthe message’ of their country and its policies (Zaharna, 2003: 3). Since theBush administration aims to turn Iraq into a showcase of stability and pros-perity for the rest of the Middle East to emulate, US credibility is at stake

here. With the USA having de facto responsibility for the economic andpolitical transformation of Iraq, public diplomacy may only be effectivewhen the basic rules of marketing are followed, in particular that the‘product matches up to the promise’(Anholt: 2003: 12).

This also implies that Washington should pursue a more even-handedpolicy towards the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and understand that onlycredibility, responsibility and reliability will result in a constructive relation-ship with the Muslim world in the wider Middle East. The bottom line for USpublic diplomacy is that all PR and branding efforts are only as good as the

product being sold. The jury is still out on the question of whether USpublic diplomacy will succeed in winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of theglobal Muslim population. But without forceful efforts to convince a scepti-cal Muslim populace of the merits of the USA’s policies and its underlyinggood intentions, the military battle may be won, but the real ‘war’ will mostcertainly be lost.

* Dr Peter van Ham ([email protected]) is Deputy Head of Studies at theNetherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’ in The Hague, andProfessor at the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium). His latest books are MappingEuropean Security After Kosovo (Manchester University Press, 2002) and European Integration and the Postmodern Condition (Routledge, 2001).

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